As Of Now, It’s Romney
What I took to be the banal claim that Mitt Romney is the Republican frontrunner generated a lot of dissension in comments recently. But while this is fairly trivial in itself, it accurately reflects the underlying dynamic. McCain is obviously DOA. (And while Kerry’s win may tempt some to think that it’s possible to come back from the dead, in addition to the fact that it’s the exception that proves the rule I would note that there was no faction of the Democratic Party who hated John Kerry. Kerry’s comeback was predicated on him being vaguely acceptable to most Democrats after Dean imploded.) The argument for Giuliani seems to be that authoritarianism and militarism are far more important to the GOP base than anything else. The problem here, however is that 1)among GOP primary voters I think that’s actually quite questionable, and 2)Romney can also give them authoritarianism and militarism without being pro-choice. I think Romney is also a better campaigner. At any rate, social reactionaries are very powerful within the GOP primary, and they’re just not going to accept a social liberal. If a pro-choice Republican won, this would be particularly devastating, particularly given the shallow commitment of the GOP pro-business elite to these issues. If Giulani is the alternative, Romney’s Mormonism won’t be a major factor (except that it makes his conversion to social conservatism more credible.)
So I repeat that while Thompson might beat Romney, those are the only two serious candidates. Giuliani’s national poll numbers don’t mean much more than Leiberman’s lead in the last cycle.